Using Bits of Left Over Molding Rubber to Volumize New Molds
In this Robert Tolene video, he offers a tip for saving on molding materials. He calls it “dunkin’ chunkies” — he cuts old mold pieces into small chunks and adds them into a new mold pour (in the areas where they won’t interfere with the object being molded).
Using a Shop Towel to Constrain Snipped Bits
From a Pask Makes video: When cutting/nipping bits of metal or other material that might fly away, line up your cut and then cover the workpiece with a towel before doing the cutting. This will prevent the waste pieces from flying all over your work area.
A Web App for Creating Project Boxes
Via Bob Clagett’s I Like to Make Stuff: MakerCase is a free web app that allows you to design boxes and project cases that can then be laser- or CNC cut. Once you’re satisfied with your design, MakerCase turns the model into an SVG or DXF file that can be sent to a laser cutter or CNC router.
Put Screws Back When Disassembling
Via this Tested video from Adam Savage: In disassembling parts you’ll be reassembling, rather than storing the hardware somewhere and then trying to remember where it all goes back, temporarily hand-screw it into the threaded part of the piece for safe keeping.
Here are some of my favorite tool mentions from the newsletter this year.
Recommended by reader Emory Kimbrough:
Titmus SW09R Livewire sealed glasses – they combine ANSI-rated impact protection with dust seals, a removable head strap that creates an even better seal against sneaky dust, and keeps the glasses from slipping down or slipping off at a bad moment. Finally, these were available with progressive lenses and in my strong prescription. Got mine with good customer service and prompt shipping from safetygearpro.com.
On the subject bit drivers, reader KokoTheTalkingApe, chimed in:
“My favorite is the Wiha Ultra Driver. It stores 13 double-ended bits in the handle, so it has 26 tips. The bits are stored in two rotating carousels that fan open when you pull them out. I don’t usually like proprietary bits, but these have held up well and replacements are readily available. The bitholder locks onto the bit. Made in Germany. Not ratcheting.”
Via Stumpy Nubs came this brilliant idea of wrapping your tool handles in stretchy, grippy hockey tape.
The iFixit electronics driver set is well thought out and designed, solidly built, with 64 bits of every configuration you’re likely to encounter: Slotted, Phillips, Torx, Torx Security, Square, Pentalobe, Hex, five nutdrivers, and more. There is also a flex extension shaft and the lid acts as a small parts sorting tray.
Mentioned in newsletter 118, at only $119, the Craftsman 7-¼” cordless circular saw is amazingly good for the price.
In issue 122, I included testing of folding knives by Todd at Project Farm. The surprise knife was the Kingmax at an amazing price of $13. And from an earlier Project Farm knife test: Smith & Wesson ($15.50).
This was the year I finally fell in love with Carhartt work shirts. Don’t know what took me so long. Also available in women’s sizes.
Need mechanical shop pencils? You want a FastCap FatBoy.
Maker Slang for 2022
I rounded up all of the content from the maker jargon and slang columns this year and did a Boing Boing post. You can see the entire list here. And last year’s list here.
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Cool tools really work.
A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
Not a map really, but a 5-foot-high chart showing in one glance 4,000 years of human history on a global scale. Thirty years ago I saw this on the wall of someone’s dorm room and it flipped me out then, and every time I’ve seen it since. Its beauty is how Mr. Sparks divies up world power (somewhat crudely) into its main factions graphed in each increment of fifty years since 2000 B.C.E. Different civilizations are color-coded so one can easily trace the flow and ebb of culture over the centuries.
It has three uses for me: whenever I am reading about some historical event I can instantly see what else was going on in the world at that time (for instance, what was happening in France during the Ming Dynasty). I also get a very intuitive sense of the rises and falls of civilizations, a pattern that no other chart or book has been able to give me. And hanging on the wall, it never fails to elicit gaps of shock when visitors recognize our modern place in the chart. At ten bucks, it’s a bargain education.— KK
The long view. Or rather, views. Geological time and biological time run at such different paces that the two perspectives are not easily brought together. This crisp chart joins them with extraordinary clarity. It lays out the chronologies of continents skittering around the globe, of comet and asteroid impacts, and of life’s increasingly diverse groups of living creatures and how they fit into geological time. And more. Ordinarily, combining such staggering amounts of information would yield mush and muddle. But this exquisitely printed, laminated poster manages to present 4.5 billion years of geology and biology as the unified whole that it is. Like a good map it teaches something at two feet away, or you can get out a magnifying glass and read down for details. — KK
From the chart’s Web site: “Included are plate tectonic maps, mountain building events (orogenies), major volcanic episodes, glacial epochs, all known craters from asteroid and comet impacts, over 100 classic fossil localities from around the world, fossil ranges of plants, invertebrates and vertebrate life forms, and major extinction events as revealed by the fossil record. Also evident on this chart are the “Cambrian explosion” of animal phyla and the juxtaposition of reptiles and mammals across the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary. Hundreds of illustrations add a striking visual dimension to the data.”
Simply the best overview of the — long now — I am aware of. Displays with utmost intelligence 50 centuries of civilization, as revealed in the complex rise and fall of ancient powers. Because it is not as linear as the famous, previously-reviewed Histomap, it is not as handy for quickly locating a fact in time, but its extra dimensions make this diagram the one I keep returning to to grok the past 5,000 years.— KK
Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
